The Israel Embassy in Rome issued a statement today denying that Israel had ever sent or planned to send a representative to the current Ecumenical Council.
The statement was issued to the Deutsche Pressagentur(DPA), a West German news service which recently carried a report dealing with plans o the Ecumenical Council to develop a statement on Catholic-Jewish relations. The DPA story had asserted that plans for such a statement were “rendered more difficult by the appearance of a representative of the Israel Government in the Vatican, who wanted to discuss the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Jews.”
The Embassy statement said flatly that the reported appearance was “totally untrue” and that the Government of Israel had never “sent, nor nominated, nor considered nominating a representative to the Vatican or to Rome whose task would have been to attempt to discuss the affairs of Council Vatican II. “We believe that the Ecumenical Council concerns itself with religious, i.e., theological and moral questions; and that the Council is not, nor could it be, influenced by factors outside the Catholic Church,” the Israel Embassy said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
